Learning to relax may not be a good remedy.
Some stress can be good for the body and help to fight off cancer researchers reported in the journal Cell.
Experiments with mice showed that animals put into a stressful situation, even fighting with other mice, did a better job of fighting tumors than mice left to chill out.
“The way we live, and how we live, may well have a much bigger impact on the prognosis of cancer than we recognized previously,” said Matthew During, a professor of neuroscience who worked on the study, in a telephone interview.
Dr. During’s team injected mice with melanoma, a type of fast-growing skin cancer, and let the tumors grow. They put some of the mice in a large cage, with lots of toys, space and many more other mice than usual.
Other mice stayed in ordinary lab cages.
After three weeks, tumors shrank almost in half in the mice in the “stimulating” cage and they shrank 77 per cent after six weeks. The tumors completely disappeared in 17 per cent of the mice, with no other cancer treatment.
Tumors continued to grow in the other mice.
Up to now, scientists have only studied mice in situations of severe stress. That mice do better in situations of moderate stress has implications for cancer patients, Dr. During said.
“We shouldn’t be simply avoiding stress and looking for happiness,” Dr, During said. “We should be getting involved in team sports, getting involved in social groups, where there’s sort of an interactive dynamics which are a little bit challenging for us.”
This study encourages one to reflect on how we should balance our work and play and what kind of dynamics are good for productivity and good health.
